for her eyes.
Courtney, you bunk in the den tonight, Ruth said. And all night long the tweed nubs of the couch stung at Courtney’s cheeks like the flying debris.
Paige didn’t recover right away. And the second night of the fever, Courtney went upstairs and found Paige out of the sheets, her nightgown flung up and her legs sprawled. At first Courtney was stunned and then she argued in her mind like a prayer to go forward to help Paige. And her feet obeyed. She touched Paige’s arm, which was hot as a dish from the oven. Does it hurt? she asked, and Paige moaned and said no. I’m just burning up. I caught fire.
No, you didn’t, said Courtney. You couldn’t. We were standing too far away.
I was supposed to, said Paige. And I did.
I think it’s only supposed to happen for a short time, then stop.
On the third night, Ruth said, Fever or not, it’s time to rejoin the living. And when their father came home it was like the girls were watching a beautiful show. It had nothing to do with them. Paige, pale and sulky in her green pajamas, at the dinner table. Their father was telling Ruth the big news from the courthouse. The town council. His lawyers had finally severed the witch’s head.
What head? asked Courtney.
Her father couldn’t hear her. That conniving bitch, he said to Ruth. She thought she’d just go on strangling me from hell.
Who?
Sweetheart? their father said to Ruth. Pausing like the sheriff, finally about to choose the right saloon girl, the most virtuous. Sweetheart, they dropped the charges.
Ruth put her hands together and closed her eyes.
What charges? asked Courtney.
And.
And?
He’d been offered a variance to build a tower.
Ruth burst out laughing. No!
Yes.
Now won’t those Beach Club pokey-pokes be singing a different tune.
Pokey-pokes? asked their father, delighted. That’s cute.
Each apartment in their father’s new tower had a balcony with hurricane-resistant glass. This was a big point in the design. So the inhabitants, forty families on the ocean side, could sit in the comfort of their living rooms and not be looking at a steel barricade. They were paying for the view after all. The hurricane glass in standard green was nearly an inch thick and cost one hundred dollars a square foot and would weather any storm. How had the crab-claw etchings and the pale-pink glass roses survived all those years?
The ocean house had been built on rocks, on sand, but the tower required an excavation so deep, so reinforced, it would double as a bomb shelter for the families during the Cold War. Each apartment had access to impermeable individual kiosks like concrete cages with slats in the wall for bunk beds. Most of the families kept junk there, stuff they couldn’t fit in the apartment. The oxygen tanks hanging at intervals lost pressure over the years. And despite claims, water seeped in and pooled. When Courtney was fifteen, she led Eddie through the sub-basements as dark and shadowy as the catacombs where the Christian martyrs hid or just waited for death, and she felt the warm silky nub of his bluish penis for the first time there. Her sneakers getting wet. He pushed up hard against her until his heart beat inside the cage of her own chest like love.
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